ALEX McLeish intends to take a leaf out of his former boss Sir Alex Ferguson’s book when it comes to nurturing stars of the future.

The Blues boss has high hopes for 16-year-old midfielder Jordon Mutch and spoke during the club’s pre-season tour of the need not to rush him into first-team action at such a young age despite an encouraging summer.

McLeish was speaking from experience after working with Ferguson as part of the great Aberdeen side of the 80s.

But he remembers how he was brought back down to earth after his first-team debut by Fergie’s predescessor Billy McNeil.

“You can end up with a succession of injuries and a career riddled with them. There’s examples of that out there that I can base my education on,” said McLeish.

“You’ll know over the years how the likes of Alex Ferguson nurtured people like Paul Scholes and those young players. They were all introduced to the team gradually at the right times and blooded. In my own experience I made my own first team debut when I was 18, nearly 19 at the time. Aberdeen beat Dundee United 1-0 at Pittodrie in front of 25,000, and I thought that was me in the first team.

‘‘Billy McNeill was manager at the time and told me he would not play me in the following game.

‘‘I couldn’t understand that but I look back to that time and feel it was good management.

‘‘I saw players from that great Aberdeen era that we had having to finish the game early, Eric Black was one of them, there’s an example.

‘‘But there were three or four from that team, Alex Ferguson said in his book that he learned from that.

“So we won’t push Jordon, if I thought he was 100 per cent ready then he’d be in, if I thought he was ahead of Nafti or Lee Carsley we would be contemplating putting in him.

“The fact that he’s got to this position speaks volumes. But it’s a bit early just to plunge him in at this level.”